Harlan Ellison likes pepper. He likes it so much he travels with his own pepper mill:

When I pull it out on a plane, at first people cannot figure out what I’m doing, and some even make snotty remarks about, “Oh, you travel with your own pepper shaker,” to which I ALWAYS reply, “Pepper MILL, not ‘shaker.’ You ‘shake’ that grubby thimbleful of crap on your lettuce while I grind fresh Jamaican peppercorns onto MY salad. Yes, I in fact DO ‘travel with my own pepper’ mill. Do you, and I hope the answer is yes, have a problem with that? Or would you simply prefer to fall enviously silent so I can lord it over you?”

So, it’s around 2pm and I’m getting hungry – I haven’t had lunch yet. I forgot my wallet at home, and all I have is a loaf of bread and gum on my desk. I don’t feel like eating plain whole wheat bread, but I see a jar of peanut butter at a co-worker’s cubicle. What the hell – he won’t mind. So I make a peanut butter sandwich.

5 minutes later: The sandwich has an odd aftertaste. It doesn’t taste like peanuts. While eating it it seemed fine, but now, a lingering aftertaste of this-ain’t-right is in the back of my throat.

So I’m drinking a cup of coffee to wash that taste out. That’ll fix it! I couldn’t easily find anything on google about getting sick from old peanut butter, and google knows everything, thus I won’t get sick.

Phillip might post my obituary, if it comes to that.

While on vacation I got sick 30 minutes after eating two fried eggs. They seemed fine when I cooked and ate them, but afterwards I vomited half the day. Maybe my sense of taste isn’t acute to non-normal things.

Greg: yes, that peanut butter jar sitting in your cubicle near the window. I threw it out.

Batter-coated french fries are a fresh vegetable, according to the Agriculture Department, which has a federal judge’s ruling to back it up.
Frozen fries are fresh simply because they don’t meet the standard necessary for them to be listed as processed, and adding batter to the fries does not change the classification…
The ketchup-as-vegetable proposal was put forward in the Reagan administration, and the department dropped the idea after it found itself not only opposed but laughed at.

Nearly every culture invents a food that is weird or disgusting to outsiders. These are cultural markers that show who’s a member (they like it) and who’s not a member (they gag.)Foods don’t make it onto this list just because they are unpopular. Some people hate broccoli. So what? Foods get on this list because they are cultural markers. There’s stuff you like (and you think is normal) that other people refuse to allow in their house.

Some examples:

Poutine (France, Quebec): grease-impregnated French fries called Frites or Chip by the locals, soaked with fat-laden gravy topped by cheddar curd cheese which melts from the heat of the French fries and gravy into a sticky and stringy mess.

Seal Flipper Pie (Canada): Soak flippers in water and soda for 1/2 an hour. Trim excess fat. Dip the flippers in seasoned flour and pan fry in the pork fat until browned. Add the chopped onion. Make a gravy of flour, 1 cup water, and Worcester sauce. Pour over the flippers. Cover and Bake in a moderate oven (350f) until tender.. which should be two to three hours. Cover with pastry and bake at 400f for 1/2 an hour.